Here’s another recording from the archives – this time it’s ‘Reach Out To Jesus’, a duet with Becky Smith.

This is from 1973, I’d guess. Dr. Emmett Parks had just come to pastor First Baptist Church in Merced, and in the fall of that year we were having a revival. Our guest evangelist was the esteemed teacher and revivalist Dr. J. Edwin Orr. This wonderful man had so many things to recommend him, and one of the best was his taking a Maori melody and writing a lyric that became the much-beloved hymn ‘Search Me O God.’

But I digress.

Becky Smith was literally the girl down the street when I was growing up. I went to school with her younger sister Iris from grammar all the way through high school. In fact, it was Iris who first invited me to Merced First Baptist Church. Becky and I started singing together a lot – she was a very sweet girl with a beautiful untrained vocal quality; we blended quite well. We had worked up a duet, ‘Reach Out To Jesus’ to sing on the first Sunday evening service of the revival series, and it went over wonderfully. In fact, Dr. Orr was so moved that later in the week he unexpectedly called Becky and myself up to the platform to repeat the performance. That night the tape was rolling; you can hear our wonderful accompanist Meri Collins trying to remember what key we sang it in (we had done it by ear, no music), and you can hear Becky say ‘it’s a low one!’. We settled on a key that might have been a step higher than the original performance, but it came out just fine.

There’s nothing like two-part harmony. Enjoy!

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I’ve been digitizing some old reel tapes lately, and I stumbled on a recording of a project I undertook when I worked at KBDR, the student-run radio station at Merced College back in 1973. ‘With less power that a common light bulb’, KBDR (Blue Devil Radio) just barely covered the city limits with its ten watts of power. I was in charge of the Monday night classical programming because I was singing in the college’s Concert Choir, but mostly because no one else wanted to do the classical shift.

Anyway, I’ve always been a big fan of old time radio, and so my classmate Jim Merritt and I joined forces to produce a weekly radio drama. I lifted the premise from an old stereo demonstration record my folks had: the launch of a rocket powered by a wind-up spring. This fit right in with events of the day – the oil embargo and resulting gas rationing, references to the puny signal of the radio station. We even referenced the Patty Hearst kidnapping in a script that was never produced. In fact, only two episodes survive, and I proudly present them here for the first time since 1973.

So with a shout out to Phil, Mike, our first-episode announcer Dan Mayo and all the gang at KBDR back in the day, hear the action-packed thriller TEEEEEE MINUUUUUUUSSSSS TEEEEEEENNNNNNNN!

Episode One: Blast Off!

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Episode Two: A Sticky Wicket

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Where are you, Jim Merritt?

Way back when I was a teenager in the ’70s I was heavily involved in the youth groups at Merced First Baptist Church. I first got involved in the summer of 1969 just before entering high school, and it was a constant presence in my life until I left Merced when Heirship recorded its album and went full-time on tour.

It’s been 40 years since that first summer, and now I’m involved in planning a reunion of all the people who were involved in the youth ministry at MFBC from the late ’60s all the way through the decade of the ’70s. I’m getting some help with a few others of people from back then – we’ve compiled a list of over 175 names, including adult sponsors!

The current task is collecting contact information from all these people – email addresses, snail mail addresses, phone numbers, etc. I’ve been pushing this part of it pretty hard, as now is the time to get the event on people’s calendars before they fill up with vacations, etc. If you’ve stumbled across this and feel that you should be included but haven’t heard from anyone yet, drop a line to ‘youthofthe70s at gmail dot com’, or visit the website. There’s a Facebook group going as well; just search for ‘Youth Of The ’70s.’

There are a lot of people I’m looking forward to seeing again. August 1-2 2009 is the big event!

From the NYT’s Jeff Zeleny’s liveblog of President Obama’s first prime-time news conference on 2/0/09:

Chuck Todd of NBC News, asked whether people should spend or save any money they receive from the stimulus plan. The president’s answer seemed to be a hybrid of both. By the end of this answer, he made clear that he had inherited the problems that he was now trying to tackle. He did not mention President Bush, but there was no doubt who he was referring to.

“This notion that I came in here ginned up to spend $800 billion, that wasn’t how I envisioned my presidency beginning,” Mr. Obama said. “But we have to adapt to circumstances.”

‘…ginned up…’ – you’d never have heard Bush be that ‘off-the-cuff’. I really love this guy.

I know that my postings have been scattered in the past months, and I plan to remedy that in the coming days and weeks. I appreciate those of my dear readers who have continued to check in from time to time to see what’s new.

I direct your attention to a new item in the sidebar on the right. You, dear reader, now have the opportunity to ‘subscribe’ to this blog. That means that you can automatically receive an email whenever I post a new entry to randyphillips.net, which will relieve you of the burden of surfing to the site, only to find that nothing’s changed.

Please feel free to enter your email address in the space provided and click ‘Send’. You’ll soon receive an email asking you to confirm your wishes. Simply click on the link in that email and you’ll be all set.

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Thanks for your continued support.

An unusual convergence will occur over the next two months. In non-leap years, February and March share a symbiotic calendar relationship. Because February is exactly four weeks long with no days left over, the first day of March always falls on the same day of the week that February 1st does.

This year that coincidence is doubly interesting, as February 13th falls on a Friday, and so does March 13th. So we will have two Friday the 13ths in a row this year (there’s another one in November).

Does this mean evil portent is afoot? Twice as much bad luck to be encountered this winter? Keep the black cats in the house.

Hi there, sports fans. Yes, I’m still still wandering around on God’s green earth, just nothing post-worthy going on. I’m involved in a special project that’s taking some time.

I recently split from the Hollywood Master Chorale and am now singing with the Los Robles Master Chorale, which is closer to home and much better suited to my temperament. I’m really enjoying the Tuesday night rehearsals, and looking forward to our performances in May.

I’ve also started going to church after many years away from the flock. I’m a regular attender at Prince of Peace Anglican Church in Woodland Hills, and I’m enjoying that very much as well.

I’ll be blogging about all these things in the near future, so stay tuned!